When you have chronic pain, you may begin to feel like you have few options. Prescription pain relievers and opioids, in particular, have distinct drawbacks and risks. Physical therapy may help in some cases but may not be sufficient.
At Orthocenter, our staff and providers know that chronic pain can become an unwelcome focal point of your life. Finding ways to manage pain is crucial to maintaining relationships, your professional life, and your ability to live an active, fulfilling life. In certain cases, radiofrequency ablation (RFA) can be an important tool to provide long-lasting relief without drugs or potentially invasive interventions.
Radiofrequency ablation uses heat, or thermal, energy to disrupt pain signals nerves send from a specific area to the central nervous system. At Orthocenter, we create a small adhesion on your nerve when we perform RFA.
More precisely, we use an electrical current to create heat, which causes slight damage to the targeted nerve so that signals can no longer travel along it.
Not all chronic pain can be treated with RFA. More conservative treatments, such as physical therapy, over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications, or other interventions, should be tried first.
If those approaches don’t work, your doctor may suggest a test to make sure they can target the specific nerve. This is called a diagnostic nerve block.
Some of the types of chronic pain RFA has successfully been used to treat include:
RFA can effectively treat other issues that cause chronic pain, but these four are common. Our experts are careful to make sure they thoroughly understand the underlying cause of your pain so that they can suggest a treatment plan designed to address your specific issue.
You may experience pain relief for 6-12 months with RFA. If RFA successfully relieves your pain, you may have a repeat treatment, though it’s advisable to wait for a year before treating the same nerve.
If the diagnostic nerve block works well for you, there’s a 70-80% chance that RFA will also provide relief for you.
RFA is generally considered very safe, though cases of nerve damage, burns, bleeding, and infections have been recorded. Having a highly trained expert, such as an Orthocenter provider, perform RFA considerably lowers the risk of complications.
If you’re living with chronic pain, you likely have options that you don’t know about. The team at Orthocenter wants you to live an optimally healthy life. Schedule your appointment to get an evaluation and find out if we might be able to help you live with less pain.
